this post was submitted on 19 Apr 2024
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How are grades fake?
schools and individual teachers subjectively choose different grading conventions.
teachers can be prohibited from failing students by their school policies.
gpas measure a narrow set of skills like memorization and regurgitation rather than practical knowledge or societal value.
the school you get into is based on your gpa...as well as your socioeconomic status, your parents, their social network, your arbitrary birthplace, your skin color, and a host of other factors that have nothing to do with your grades.
After college, nobody pretends grades ever mattered. Get a law clerkship? Commercial pilot training? Writing workshop? Ever have anyone ask what your gpa was or why your gpa was what it was? Nobody has, nobody will because grades are basically horse blinders to subdue children until they live to an age you can plug them into society. Training and experience? Sure. GPA? Nope.
There are so many reasons grades are fake; those are my top o the head ones.
Schools are accredited, as such have a minimum normality to their grading schedules. It's certainly not perfect, but ap classes and universities know what's up.
My college required an sat and a gpa to even meaningfully apply, then no one ever asked about my hs grades again.
My first role out of college, as an intern asked for my gpa and many other collegiate activities. Then no one ever asked about my college gpa again.
Future jobs asked about previous jobs and often require a reference and letter of rec, which acts as a grade substitute.
Many industry certs and paths require at minimum a college diploma which requires a minimum gpa to receive.
If you come from a disadvantaged background and have a strong gpa you will have greater college opportunities thanks to that gpa.
The subjectives of societal value and individual teachers are just not relevant.
It's a proven fact that those with higher degrees earn more over their lifetimes, gpa is just a metric that gatekeeps access to higher opportunities. It's not the end all be all, but it fucking matters.
Another example, there are AP classes in highschool, and honors and gated upper level course in college that simply won't accept you if you have a poor gpa. So your access to the best of the best education, (in the case of college, sometimes world leaders on a topic) is literally limited by your ability to demonstrate good grades.
"AP classes and universities know what's up."
Okay, but
"no one ever asked about my hs grades again."
and then
"no one ever asked about my college gpa again."
Training and experience in the workplace are not a "grade substitute", they are practical historical indicators of your value in that workplace.
"Many industry certs and paths require at minimum a college diploma which requires a minimum gpa to receive."
Care to guess what those minimums are? 2.0 is fine kids, get your Cs and coast.
"If you come from a disadvantaged background and have a strong gpa you will have greater college opportunities thanks to that gpa"
Following the misguided assumption about the hypothetical value of which college one attends.
"The subjectives of societal value and individual teachers are just not relevant" - a) if we pretend gpas matter, then obviously the teachers subjectively choosing your grades are relevant. b) if you're agreeing that grades are irrelevant, then yea, that's my whole point.
I'd love to hear how you justify someone's societal value as being irrelevant. Try doctors or service workers. Truck drivers! Please detail how the societal value of truck drivers is irrelevant.
"gpa is just a metric that gatekeeps access" - definitely.
Truck drivers have a test, you have to pass lol. Doctors too.
The point is the grades get you to the next stage.
Edit.the societal value is irrelevant to my point: if you want access to more education, and more opportunities, you need to get the grades.
What the value to society of that opportunity is is not my point.
Truckers have to pass a test that evaluates their training and experience; their high school and university grades don't matter.
Same with doctors, pilots, and everyone else.
You do not need better grades to receive more education or more opportunities. You need training and experience, or money and privilege.
Again, look at the minimum gpa for the opportunities you're hypothesizing need good grades. Those minimums are low or nonexistent.
Ask your social circle how many of them received a job offer based on their grades.
Ask them how much their grades have affected their careers.
They might privately feel good or bad about their grades because the educational infrastructure they were strapped into for two decades convinced them as students the marks the schools made up and bequeathed their matriculated have intrinsic value, but those letters or numbers did not influence the shape their life has actually taken or the opportunities available to them.
Lol yes. They pass a test about their current work, which, in hs or college, is what you're tested on there.
You becoming a doctor with straight Cs? No way.
I'm actually at a pub with my social circle and just asked. It's anecdotal, and preselected, but they all corroborated grades got them their first job, in addition to extracurriculars and during school internships.
BS radar going off.
I've never talked to anyone whose grades got them their first, or any job. What are these first jobs that they needed grades for?
Especially relevant since it's about half of all jobs have anything to do with what you studied in college.
And yes, you can absolutely become a doctor with Cs, grades aren't as important as your teachers told you.
Also, software devs? I know one business owner and several software engineers who went to code camp, none of them credit their success to their grades.
Software development is the perfect example of a career in which grades are completely irrelevant.
Like I said, preselected. All my friends are lawyers, engineers and software devs.
You are not becoming a doctor without passing the MCAT or regional equivalent. You are not passing that without being at least being proficient at all your undergrad classes.
Anyway, believe what you want, it doesn't matter to me. We live in a society, and that society rewards good grades. They don't matter forever, they matter for the next step.
MCATs, LSATs, CDL licensing and similar exams determine practical training and experience.
Your grades do not prohibit you from taking these entrance exams.
Grades do not matter forever, temporarily, or for the "next step", they're arbitrary value judgments that you became convinced mattered regardless of the evidence to the contrary.
Those are grades! Lol holy shit
I understand you really want to keep changing the goalposts from the original topic of irrelevant high school grades to program-specific required university courses and now pretending that practical on-hands training and experience is the same as your score on a geology quiz, but they're not.
I clearly enunciated how each stage is related to the next, and no further.
You asked for anecdotes and I gave em. You asked for industry specifics and I gave em.
You clearly aced this, stick the landing by not replying, if you can
Making up what happened isn't going to convince anyone who knows how to scroll up.
Grades are irrelevant. You can't disprove that, so you changed the argument to include limited anecdotes that also don't correspond to reality(software devs do not, by any stretch of the imagination, need good grades) and by pretending that driving a truck and practicing maneuvers for hours to gain training and experience for a career is the same as a high school quiz nobody will ever ask you about(it is not).
I countered your misguided cherry-picked implications with objective facts by sticking to the original point, that grades are fake and school is BS.
F
I've multiple times described the focus, and details of my argument..you've only "nuh uh"ed.
The WHOLE WORLD uses grades to measure progress, and regularly uses grades to gate entry to further, more specific opportunities. Exceptions do not make this untrue, and often those exceptions have their own internal standards they hold members to.
My "bullshit detector" signals you are an angry student, disillusioned with your curriculum.
Do you math homework bud, it sucks but it's better than taking to me.
Many institutions use grades, certainly not the whole world. Maybe you missed my examples of code camp, LSATs, or you've never heard of vocational schools.
Grades are common, but being common does not make grades useful or relevant except to perpetuate the system of contemporary traditional academia.
Your detector is as incorrectly wired as your flawed assumptions about the relevance of grades.
Mmk